In the latest episode of the US ad-skipping saga, Dish Networks is facing the wrath of broadcasters such as NBC and Fox, but winning praise from customers and no doubt causing a little churn among competitors. That at least is the intention of the Dish PVR ad skipping feature called Auto Hop, with the company gambling that the gain in subscription revenue will make the pain of having to defend a possibly protracted case against it from broadcasters worthwhile.…

The Falcon 9 rocket from private space company SpaceX, intended to launch this morning and send a Dragon capsule loaded with supplies to the International Space Station, has failed to take off. The rocket's computer aborted the launch automatically at almost the final possible moment, when its engines had already ignited but the vehicle had not yet been released from the pad.…

Product round-up  As the speedy texter generation grows longer in the Bluetooth and touchscreen technologies improve, the range of Qwerty phones on offer gets smaller by the day. But for many, they wouldn't use anything else. Indeed, for RIM, Qwerty keys have been the hallmark of it BlackBerry handsets.…

Microsoft has urged developers to only use approved Windows 8 software interfaces to avoid spoiling the launch of its new operating system with dodgy code.…

Details have emerged about the security fixes that came bundled with Apache OpenOffice 3.4.0, the latest version of the open-source productivity suite.…

Facebook's shares debuted on the Nasdaq today at $42 and immediately skidded downwards to the original IPO price of $38.…

What news will be revealed to the 13,000 people attending EMC World in Las Vegas next Monday?…

A Brit who distributed a Trojan horse that posed as a patch for popular shoot-em-up game Call of Duty has been jailed for 18 months.…

The second incarnation of CloudStore has floated, but don’t get too excited.…

Analysis  Everyone knows about Britain's soaraway space sector. It turns over £8bn a year – the same sort of money as the remaining automotive industry – it employs tens of thousands of people, and it's growing faster than the Chinese economy. And, famously, it has done all this without any significant government help.…

It's May and an time for HP to refresh its evergreen EVA storage line. HP said it would keep investing in the EVA when it bought 3PAR and has kept its promise, with two new models being announced, with larger drive support and better management SW.…

RIM and Motorola reportedly hope to break the deadlock over the design of future SIM cards by offering a blueprint that'll either appease every party or alienate all sides equally.…

Ethernet sales slumped a bit and caused Brocade's second 2012 quarter results to stumble.…

For years, the Apple Mac has played a small and niche role in enterprise computing, finding favour in areas such as desktop publishing, graphical design and video or content production.…

Amid criticism that hardly any UK government websites comply with the new EU-mandated "Cookie Law" that comes into force on 27 May, the ICO has announced that it will be sending out some letters, and then waiting for people to complain.…

The UK government denied today that it was dropping IT entirely from the national curriculum while adding that tech contracts would be more bite-sized and flexible at some point soon.…

The number of prosecutions under the UK's computer hacking laws may have declined over recent years, according to the latest available government figures.…

Glasgow-based INSP, which represents magazines distributed by the homeless, is planning to go digital - assuming it can raise enough cash to pay for some trials.…

Apple is flying the green flag on the North Carolina data centre that will power iCloud – the very same one that was slammed by Greenpeace for being dirty.…

Iran's Foreign Ministry has threatened to take legal action against Google because the web firm removed the name Persian Gulf from its Maps and left the stretch of water nameless.…